‘I do have a choice,’ she snapped. ‘And one of them is to make my own way home. To my home. To where I live now.’
‘How do you get home from here?’ he asked, as if mildly interested, not taking up her nuances. ‘A cab? I’ll drive you.’
‘I ride the subway.’
‘The subway…’
‘This is my neighbourhood, Nikos,’ she said, and made her voice sound sure and mature and…determined. ‘This is where I live. But I need to go. Oscar and Nicholas are expecting me.’
‘Who are Oscar and Nicholas?’
‘My family,’ she said, and the thought of Nicholas brought fear flooding back. ‘So…so, if you’ll excuse me…Oh, you need to pay? Sorry if I don’t wait. Goodnight.’
And she turned and walked from the restaurant.
When she reached the pavement she slipped off her shoes and she started to run.
CHAPTER TWO
CARRIE was watching TV when she let herself into her apartment. Lovely, comforting Carrie, middle-aged and buxom, knitting endless squares to turn into endless blankets for the homeless. She closed the door, leant on it as if to lock the world out and let herself be comforted by the domesticity in front of her.
Oscar was lying draped over Carrie’s feet. The big basset hound looked up at her with soulful reproach, as if to say, You expect me to get up at this time of night? You need to be kidding.
She smiled. Oscar helped as well.
‘Hey, great jacket,’ Carrie said equably from the couch. ‘You swap jackets with a boy?’
Whoops. She’d forgotten she was wearing it. Or maybe subconsciously she’d known, and she liked it. She fingered the soft, worn leather and found comfort there as well.
‘Yep,’ she said.
‘A good-looking one?’
‘Yep to that as well. Really good-looking.’
‘Excellent,’ Carrie said and dumped her knitting into her carrier bag. ‘He ask you out?’